The Great Leader by Jim Harrison

do.” Of course Bushrod was lying. “You shouldn’t encourage them.”
    By the time they started back to Tucson Sunderson would have given an incalculable amount of money to be away from Bushrod not to speak of Lucy in her present incarnation as a dutiful daughter, which meant a piece of raw emotional roadkill. After the lizard-man the remaining singular event was a large rattlesnake crossing a two-track. They got out to look at it and Bushrod teased the viper to exhaustion with a long stick.
    â€œI won that round,” Bushrod said.
    â€œThe snake didn’t have a stick,” Sunderson parried.
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean, young man?”
    â€œTry it without a stick.” Sunderson loathed those television nature programs featuring people pestering frantic animals in the name of knowledge.
    â€œYou are impudent!” Bushrod yelled.
    â€œI hope so.”
    â€œPlease,” said Lucy, a frantic animal.
    They drove back in silence and when they reached the Arizona Inn Sunderson bolted from the vehicle without a word. Safely in his room he uncapped a cheap travel pint of Four Roses knowing it would have taken a gallon to purge the day. There was an envelope with a fax on the coffee table. The voice mail light on his phone was on and he listened grimly to his mother. “Son, Berenice said the restaurant at your hotel is wonderful. We want to come in for dinner.” He called back from his cell phone in case she had caller ID that would read Arizona Inn.
    â€œMom, I’m on my way to Willcox.”
    â€œThe hotel said you hadn’t checked out.”
    â€œI just did.”
    â€œHow sad. I had high hopes for a nice dinner.”
    â€œI’ll see you in a couple of days.” He called the hotel operator and asked that all calls be blocked, then read the fax from Mona. “This guy’s a wiz. He got on to me and said, ‘You’ll be in real trouble if you keep tracking me.’ Love, your darling Mona who aches for her stepdaddy. P.S. the quote you wanted from Crichton is from the Washington Post not the NY Times .”
    All our progress of luxury and knowledge . . . we have not been lifted by as much as an inch above the level of the darkest ages . . . The last hundred years have wrought no change in the passions, the cruelties, and the barbarous impulses of mankind. There is no change from the savagery of the Middle Ages. We enter a new century equipped with every wonderful device of science and art but the pirate, the savage, and the tyrant still survives.
    Sunderson took off his clothes and got under the sheets after mixing a hefty second drink. Life at present called for a professional-size nap but his mind was a whirling jangle despite the alcohol which had failed its soporific mission. It was 5:00 p.m. back in Marquette thus his first full workday of retirement was finished, not that a detective was ever truly off duty. Leisure was overrated he thought in a second euphemism. His mind wandered among its flotsam and jetsam looking for a pleasant factoid that might ease him into unconsciousness. In the 1600s thousands of Tuscan girls starved themselves in order to get closer to Jesus according to a forensic pathologist. No, this was too jarring. Because of his brook trout fishing he had known for two years that the little leopard frogs were disappearing from the landscape before Diane had discovered the fact in an eco magazine. She was angry he hadn’t told her. So what. He had prayed at age eight that his little brother Robert would grow a new lower leg but when he told his dad his dad had said, “That won’t happen.” Now, fifty-five years later there was a suggestion of tears. Lucy was a Diane from hell. There was a split-second image of dropping Bushrod down a manhole and sliding back the heavy cover. Down there with the shit he is. This didn’t work because violence causes a surge of blood. Marion said that there were no